Epic Sax Guy

"Introducing, on the trumpet..."

Jim is massively underrated i feel. His ability is great, effectively giving you a bag with 3 0's, even if the bag is set to hard. Cards like Ritual Candles and Lucky! monopolize on his ability somewhat in the sense they have synergy with it, but its cards like Machete where his ability shines - he turns good cards great. A +1 buff makes his average stats into good stats and coupled with this ability iv found you can perform tests all day and still play hot jazz all night.

Jim Culver Tactica

Jim as an ID does what all ID's that i really enjoy do - draw from the bag but with better odds. (I say 'all' but really, its only Wendy and Jenny that do this, besides Jim, and Jen needs talents to really shine). Flattening the variability of the chaos bag is huge, and i will happily take the drop in dramatic tension in return for the feeling of kicking ass in half the number of doom tokens as other IDs.

Opening hand

This is meant to be a flexible deck, it has plenty of clout in combat, and some nice tricks to gather clues at a fast clip. There's lots of overlap and lots of strong cards, because of this, there are no hard and fast rules about what to mulligan for. Don't overthink your hand, but if you have to choose, Magnifying Glass is slightly better early on than Drawn to the Flame, while Machete and Shrivelling are about equal - just go with what feels right for the campaign setting.

Investigating

Speaking of Magnifying Glass - it may seem like a wasted slot or a flex slot, with Rite of Seeking and Drawn to the Flame, but its actually pretty key. Use the Rite as your main clue engine when you get it, and Drawn to the Flame for those times when you need action compression and need clues fast. But Magnifying Glass bridges the two and is what you want when your staring down the barrel of a few 1-2 shroud locations.

Lucky! does some good work while investigating too.

Combat

Machete and Shrivelling are equally valid for combat as mentioned above, and even later when you upgrade i would keep 2x of each. Really, between the either of these cards and Overpower, AND Jim's ability, you will be really surprised how he handles himself in combat. When you get the chance (i.e an enemy with low evade) then Blinding Light can be a great tempo card, even if you stick around to finish the enemy off.

Jim's Trumpet

Sucks. There i said it. You don't need it, think of it as the 2nd Guts. Because of this, you can go down to 1 or even 0 Fearless (a pretty flex card anyway) while upgrading and not worry about your icons.

Upgrading

If you have the pack Song of the Dead is brilliant. Potentially 3 damage per attack (remember your playing Jim, so you have 3x 's in the bag) is good, real good. Keep 'chete and Shrivelling in though, just in case. Ritual Candles can be slowly subbed out for Grotesque Statue, which in a Jim deck i would argue is just strictly better, even if it runs out. Depending on the encounter, Drawn to the Flame can go down to x1 as well if you need the slot for something more drastic, or your playing with 2+ investigators. If your solo-ing, spend a care for Delve Too Deep - i haven't play tested it yet, but my flat mate reckons its peng and she is normally right about these things.

"..and for our encore..."

I think this is the best way to play Jim at the minute, enjoy the redundancy of overlapping power cards, dont worry too much about talents or icon cards, and really get stuck into the flexibility of the card pool. You don't need to make the same card choices i did to even appreciate these principles, to be honest. But do give Jim a chance if you haven't played him yet, you'll be impressed i guarantee.